I'll Walk Alone - Mary Higgins Clark [43]
It had been a long day. “Nobody sends for me, including you, Mr. Longe,” Elaine said, crisply. Fire me if you don’t like that, she thought. I’m sick of the sight of you. She did not wait for Longe to react before continuing. “There is a man out here who insists on seeing you. I gather he’ll wait in the reception room until the cows come home, so unless you want to sneak out the back door, you’d better meet with him. His name is Toby Grissom and he’s Brittany La Monte’s father. I’m sure you’ll remember her name. She freelanced for you about two years ago when we were showing the Waverly apartments.”
Bartley Longe leaned back in his chair, a puzzled expression on his face, as if trying to remember Brittany La Monte. He knows perfectly well who I’m talking about, Elaine thought, as she noticed the way he clasped his hands tightly together.
“Of course I remember that young woman,” he said. “She was trying to be an actress and I even introduced her to some people who might have helped her. But as I recall, the last time we had one of those situations where we used the models, she wasn’t available.”
Neither Elaine nor Bartley Longe had heard Toby Grissom come through Elaine’s office and stand at the partially opened door. “Don’t give me that stuff, Mr. Longe,” Grissom said, his voice rising in fury. “You gave Brittany a line about making her a star. You had her up to your fancy place in Litchfield plenty of weekends. Where is she now? What did you do to my little girl? I want the truth and unless I get it, I’m going straight to the cops.”
31
It was 7:30 P.M. by the time Zan, against all medical advice, was in a cab on her way to Alvirah and Willy’s apartment with Charley Shore. She had insisted Josh go home after flatly refusing his offer to sleep on the couch of her apartment. If there’s anything I need now, she thought, it’s to be alone later on and gather my wits about me.
“Shouldn’t you be on your way home, too?” she asked Shore as the cab inched its way along York Avenue.
Charley Shore decided not to tell Zan that he and his wife had theatre tickets for a play they both wanted to see and that he had phoned his wife to tell her to leave his ticket at the box office, that he’d be there when he could make it. Once again he thanked heaven for the fact that Lynn was always understanding when a situation like this came up. “I don’t think I’ll be terribly late,” he had told her. “Zan Moreland is in no condition to have a long discussion with me tonight.”
That opinion was more than reinforced by the deadly paleness of Zan’s complexion and the way she was shivering inside the fake-fur vest she was wearing. I’m glad she’s going to be with Alvirah and Willy, Charley thought. She trusts them. Maybe she’ll even tell them where her son is.
When Alvirah had called him earlier this afternoon about Alexandra Moreland, she had been direct with him. “Charley, this is someone you’ve got to help. I thought a tree had fallen on me when I saw those photographs. I don’t see how they can be fake. But there’s nothing fake about the way she’s been suffering and trying to find Matthew. If she took him, she doesn’t remember it. Don’t people go into zombielike states when they’ve had breakdowns?”
“Yes, it’s not frequent, but sometimes they do,” he told her.
Now in the cab, Charley wondered if Alvirah had not diagnosed Moreland’s condition with deadly accuracy. When he got to the hospital earlier, she had still been out of it, but was mumbling her son’s name over and over again. “I want Matthew … I want Matthew …”
The words had torn his heart. When he was ten years old, his two-year-old sister had died and he could still vividly remember that terrible day at the grave, and his mother’s plaintive wail. “I want my baby. I want my baby.”
He looked at Zan. The cab was dark, but from the headlights of other cars and the brightly lit signs on stores along the way, he could clearly see her face. I am going to help you, he vowed. I’ve been in the business forty years and I’m going to